Upon the death of a family member the surviving loved one of the deceased must make a number of decisions, including what type of funeral or other memorial service to hold, preparation of the body, selection of a suitable casket or cremation urn, etc. In the death care industry it is conventional for those decisions to be made in a so-called “arrangement conference.” In an arrangement conference, the funeral director meets with the surviving loved one of the deceased, typically in the funeral home of the funeral director, and describes to and discusses with the surviving loved one the various funeral products and services which are available. The funeral director may use visual aids such as a product catalog, product display board (such as that disclosed in the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 5,787,626 titled Funeral Product Display Case hereby incorporated by reference herein) and a casket selection room (such as that disclosed in the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 5,405,017 titled Modular Casket Display System and in the assignee's pending application Ser. No. 09/638,576 titled Display For A Casket Selection and/or Viewing Room both hereby incorporated by reference herein) to illustrate the products available to the customer.
There is a trend in the death care industry to make efforts towards “personalizing” the funeral products and the funeral or other memorial service purchased for the deceased to provide a more meaningful memorial experience for the family and friends of the deceased. One of the earlier attempts at providing a means of personalizing or customizing a casket to the deceased may be seen with reference to the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 4,457,054 titled Casket Shelf, hereby incorporated by reference herein. That patent discloses a casket shelf which is mounted to the dish assembly of the head end cap when the head end cap is in the open position. The shelf provides a surface for supporting and displaying articles of religious or personal significance to the deceased.
Many casket manufacturers and funeral directors now manufacture and offer many “custom modular” variations of caskets, rather than selling mere “cookie cutter” or “one size fits all” caskets, thereby allowing the loved one to in essence design a specific casket especially suited or tailored to the deceased. For example, customers can select from a number of casket materials, casket finishes, casket corner adornments and casket interiors. Advances made in the area of “quick change” and “tool less” fastening mechanisms have greatly facilitated the rapid removal of one accessory from the casket and the rapid installation of another more desirable accessory to the casket. In addition to promoting personalization of the casket to the deceased, such interchangeability greatly reduces the amount of inventory the funeral director must keep on hand. An example may be seen in the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 6,591,446 titled Quick Change Casket Corner Attachment Mechanism and hereby incorporated by reference herein, commercially available as the LifeSymbols® line of interchangeable corner adornments available from Batesville®.
The “custom” casket interiors available to the funeral customer today include not only the internal lining material of the casket (which itself may also be of the quick-change type, see the Assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 5,784,768 titled Casket Having Quickly Interchangeable And Adjustable Interior and hereby incorporated by reference herein) but also the decorative cap panels that fit within the underneath of the casket cap which serve to present a visually aesthetically pleasing appearance to the underside of the cap when in the open position. The cap panel can be embroidered with a favorite saying of the deceased, a scene depicting the deceased's hobby, etc. Special cap panels have even been designed which, in addition to performing a memorial function while installed in the casket, are adapted to be presented to the loved one surviving the deceased to be displayed by the loved one in his or her home as a keepsake. See U.S. Pat. No. 6,237,202 titled Dish Assembly For A Burial Casket Cap assigned to the assignee of the present invention and hereby incorporated by reference herein, the subject of which is commercially available as the MemoryFrame™ line of cap panels available from Batesville®. The casket can also include a memorabilia drawer in which keepsakes of the deceased can be stored and displayed, as disclosed in the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 5,611,124 titled Casket Having Memorabilia Compartment and hereby incorporated by reference herein, commercially available as the MemorySafe® line of caskets including memorabilia drawers available from Batesville®.
Advances have therefore been made in the area of “personalization” of funeral products as demonstrated with the novel products discussed above. However, there continues to be room for improvement in the area of personalization in the death care industry.